[b][u][center]A Study of Connections
Part 8
For a-lycotonum
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]








[i]Well…at least it’s Tristan and not one of the conservative priests.[/i]

That was the only positive thing that Hazel could think of right then, and even that wasn’t that positive. They had just been caught exiting the Vault of the temple, a place that none of them had the right to be in, and none of them had requested to visit. They had jumped over all the protocol for that sort of thing, and they had been caught red-handed. Nearly red-handed, as at least they hadn’t managed to steal anything from it, though that was more a matter of stupidity than anything else. 

Tristan continued to stare at her, Vakrozad, Sparrow, and Sparrow’s hobgoblin lover. There was no sympathy, no hidden message in that gaze, either. He was genuinely annoyed with all four of them, and either was debating what to punish them with or what to ask next. Either way, they weren’t in a good position. 

Hazel stepped forward. 

“Can we talk privately?” she asked. 

“About some explanation for this, I hope.”

“Yes.”

“…Fine. Come with me. And be [i]quiet.[/i]”

Sparrow opened her mouth, but thankfully, Vakrozad reached out and covered it. The hobgoblin chief, for all his other faults, at least realized that they were in a precarious situation. Tristan shook his head, turning to the wall before them and resting his hand against it. He whispered something, and the tree seemed to turn half-liquid at his touch. 

“Come with me.”

They passed through the no longer solid wood, stepping into the tree itself. It was a simple spell, though a powerful one, and not one that Hazel knew just yet. It was similar to the wide step that happened when some of the druids slipped into the trees and stepped out in a different forest miles away, but this was different. More divine. More powerful. And it seemed to be something that they only used here, at the temple. 

Something worth remembering, she supposed. 

They emerged in Tristan’s office. The High Priest oversaw the temple from the great heights of the great tree, and they were surrounded by leafy branches that filled the room with the colors of green and the onset of autumn. It was rather pretty, when one got down to it, it had to be said. 

Of course, it was hard to admire beauty of any sort when she knew why they were there. Tristan walked over to his desk, which consisted of a single longer, broader branch that split off from the ones that formed the walls of the office. He whispered to the tree again, calling a chair out for himself while leaving the rest of them standing. 

As he sat down, folding his hands together as he looked them over, Sparrow finally seemed to realize that this was actually serious. The librarian stepped forward – 

“Not. Yet.”

Tristan’s words cut through the small office, and they were as curt as she had ever heard from a priest. Hazel had never expected to run into him this angry, but now she had. And she had to figure out a way to make sure that they all got out of this alright. 

He looked between them, taking a few deep breaths before finally settling on Hazel. 

“Do you mind telling me what you were doing in the Vault in the first place?” he asked, his voice a little smoother, no longer as shaky-angry as he had been. Hazel wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one, but she collected her thoughts and answered. 

“We were looking for information.”

“We have an entire library for that, and protocol to look at the information that is kept in the Vault.”

“Until today, the information was publicly available. It was moved without warning.”

“…What were you looking up?”

“Primal Points.”

“What?”

“Primal Points. I’ve received…conflicting information on them, and I needed to know what the truth was.”

“…The rest of you. Out.”

“Since when can you tell me what to do, Tristan?” Vakrozad asked. 

Hazel whipped her head around, blinking a few times at the question. There was something just slightly off there, something that told her that she didn’t have the full picture. Before she could ask, Tristan repeated himself. 

“Out. Now. Or I’ll be forced to remove you myself.”

“…”

“Now.”

“…We’ll talk later, Tristan.”

And just like that, the hobgoblins and Sparrow were out of the room. Hazel turned back around, the question rising to her lips – 

“Not now,” Tristan said, rubbing his head. “You’re putting me in an awkward enough situation, Hazel. I told you to keep an eye out, to find out what you could. I didn’t tell you to start flouting all our traditions in the process.”

“There’s a good reason for this. I promise.”

“There better be. If anyone else gets wind of this…”

She didn’t need him to finish that. For all that the church of Erastil was focused on love and family, they weren’t that great at showing it all the time, and there were those in the hierarchy that were more concerned with keeping things the way they were rather than helping others grow. There were those that would hear what she had done, see her as getting above herself, and they would demand a stricter punishment. She had to keep herself focused, had to make sure that she didn’t keep making mistakes. 

The high priest shook his head a few times, rubbing his forehead. It was obvious, even to her, that he was operating under more stress than was good for him. His face was drawn, and he looked more tired than he had been before the hobgoblins arrived. Whatever was going on in the background, it was wearing him down. 

“What did you hear about Primal Points?” he asked. 

“Conflicting things,” she admitted. “The first said that they came about where a great decision had been made in the past, and that they were there for other people that would have to make a great decision of their own. That they were points of power, where it would change things moving forward for…well, everyone, really.”

“And the other?”

“The other…” She hesitated, feeling a strange reluctance to keep talking. She blinked, pushing past it. “The other said that the Primal Points are where creation and order and chaos warred, and where order won the day and a god was born.”

“Hmmmph…that sounds like a point of view from within the church.”

“It was.”

“Who?”

“Aster. Aster Oakhoof.”

“…Oh, gods dammit…”

She blinked in surprise. The fact that he was so upset about Sister Oakhoof wasn’t that surprising, considering that he was trying to pull the church forward and she was trying to keep it the same. They were on as close to opposite sides as two people in the same church could be, after all. It was the fact that he had cursed it. 

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been watching her, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing.”

“What [i]are[/i] you seeing?”

“A coup.”

The room went silent, and she stared at the high priest. He looked down at his desk, taking a deep breath. 

“It’s not certain, but she’s associating with more of the hardliners on the conservative side of things. The hobgoblins being here are pushing them further into their anti-‘monster’ position, rather than loosening them.”

“But they haven’t done anything.”

“Yet, they would say. Sister Oakhoof is playing the moderate at the moment, but I’ve had reports of what she says to them behind closed doors. ‘The time is coming’, is what she’s been telling them. They’re not being patient because they believe that this is the right path. They’re waiting for something to go wrong so they can pounce on it.”

“Why?”

“They’ve never been keen on me, and this is something of a step too far, in their minds,” Tristan said, shaking his head. “And if she’s pushing that point again…”

“…What?”

“It’s not good. We’ll leave it at that. Primal Points are much more than what either of your informants have said.”

“Yes, that’s…that’s what I noticed in the book.”

“You found it, then?”

“Yeah, despite a few…distractions.”

Hazel rubbed the back of her head, thankful that the Vault had various spells against scrying. The last thing that she needed was for someone to have seen Sparrow getting fucked, or her being tempted by the various roots or by Vakrozad. Her life was complicated enough without adding all the new little problems that kept popping up. 

“I was able to read through it for a time. We reached the point where a horned figure and a hound-like person walked into a cave, but after that, very little. We had to leave, then.”

Tristan nodded, but didn’t give her anything else. Instead, he reached into his desk, rooting around for something. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making notes.”

“For what?”

“For what you saw. Nobody else has been able to read that book since the foundation of the church.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. What else did you see?”

“I told you, nothing more.”

“Then describe what you did see, from where you started to where you had to stop.”

Knowing that it was the only way to find out what else was going on, Hazel did as she was told. She described the book as best she could, describing the first page with the combination of Melchiresa’s hound and Erastil’s stag moving through the forest together. She told him about the angels and demons that haunted them, hunted them, and how they ran for a cave, becoming more human as they went. She even told him how they were almost like one person as they disappeared into the cave, as if they were slowly coming together, or as if the artist was trying to make a different point. 

She even went into the philosophical theory that was presented before the artistic part, going into how it challenged the commonly-held theory in the church that the Primal Points were places of order challenging chaos and winning. Tristan paid particular attention to that, writing it all down. 

By the time they were done, the page was filled to the brim with new information, and it was clear by the look on the high priest’s face that none of this had been known before that very moment. 

“This is…insane,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. “How did this stay hidden for this long?”

“People like Sister Oakhoof, probably.”

“…Possibly, yes.” He sighed. “We’re going to have to do something about her, but not yet. Not yet.”

“Why not?” she asked. “If Aster’s interfering –”

“Politics. I’m barely holding onto this as it is. If I start going after the one member of the conservative bloc in the temple that’s apparently on my side, the rest of them are going to move on the office faster than you can blink. And if they do, and succeed, what do you think is going to happen to all the ‘monsters’ out there?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. The consequences were, indeed, dire. Sighing, she rubbed her forehead. 

“So, we just keep going as we’ve been going?”

“Minus breaking the rules, yes.”

“But if we hadn’t –”

“If you need something secret, come to me. I have ways of making sure that it gets handled [i]quietly[/i]. As it stands, I’m going to have to do [i]something[/i] with you. There’s no hiding that the Vault was breached.”

That was probably going to mean some sort of public shaming. The church wasn’t very good at punishing others besides shaming, locking them up, or banishing them entirely. There was little in the way of discipline outside that, and locking her up would mean that the other side would be getting what they wanted. 

Still, shaming was no small thing. She clenched her fists together, remembering the last time that a member of the church had been ‘shamed.’ They had been dressed in something far too exposing for the order, made to show themselves in it up and down the town, and then…well, there were other things that could be done. None that she wanted to imagine happening to her, though. 

Well, most that she didn’t want to imagine happening to her. 

No, that was a lie too. There was a part of her that really wanted those to happen, and she was doing her best to ignore that, grinding her legs together under her dress and shaking her head.

“I understand, high priest.”

“Good. We’ll…start that tonight. The others can come in again.”

She walked to the door, letting Vakrozad and the others through again. The big hobgoblin marched right by her, narrowing his eyes at the high priest. 

“You going to let me have my guard dog back, now?” he asked. 

“I meant to ask. Why do you keep calling her that?” Tristan said. 

“You mean you didn’t pick her for that were-stuff?”

“…”

All eyes, from Sparrow to Tristan to the other hobgoblin, slowly turned to stare at her again. Hazel wanted to shrivel up and disappear, to just not be there right at that moment, but she didn’t exactly have that option. Instead, she slowly sank down to the floor, drawing little circles along the ground as she stared at the wood beneath her. 

“What do you mean, were-stuff?” Tristan asked, his voice even more carefully controlled than before. 

“Come on, I know human noses aren’t good for anything, but can’t you smell that?”

“I smell very little at the moment. Perfumes from the trees killed my nose long ago.”

“Ugh. You mean, you haven’t shown him?” Vakrozad asked her. 

“Not yet…”

“Well, come on.”

She yelped as the hobgoblin chieftain picked her up. Before she could do or say anything, he grabbed at the skirt of her dress and yanked it up. Her cheeks burned as red as they could get as she was exposed not just as going without panties, but for walking around with…with a rather feral sex between her legs. 

Tristan stared at her as Vakrozad held her dress up, showing it off. 

“I’ve been calling her a guard dog for that. I just figured it was part of a transformation that went off.”

“…I see.”

“She told me you knew.”

“I didn’t.”

And just like that, Hazel went from having some control of the situation to having none, and having two very angry males on either side of her. She managed to squirm out of Vakrozad’s grip, helped immensely by the fact that he finally let go, and pushed her dress back down before Sparrow could get a look at the canine parts down there, too. 

“I can explain.”

“You had better. But first…Chieftain. If you could?”

“Get the other girl and yourself in the hall,” the hobgoblin said, nodding at his warrior. They disappeared, leaving just Hazel, the chief, and the high priest in the room. The latter was the first to speak. 

“You lied.”

“I didn’t tell the whole truth,” Hazel corrected him. 

“You were asked about what happened in Absalom. You didn’t tell us the extent of what happened.”

“And if I had said that on the main floor?” 

She had debated it, certainly. She didn’t want to think about showing what had happened to her down there, didn’t want anyone else to know, but would there have been a point to it? She would have been locked up, pushed into a cell until someone could figure out how to drain the rest of the corruption from her, and there would have been no-one willing to stand up for the hobgoblins. Tristan couldn’t have done it from his position without risking losing it, and there weren’t enough other priests willing to take that stand. 

More to the point, if they hadn’t been able to fix her down there, back in the Arcanamirium and with all the priests and mages available to help, she doubted that they would have had any better luck up north. They would have tried, locked her up, and then kept her there, seeing her as a danger despite her not doing anything. 

And she wasn’t. She might have had mild corruption, but she was still herself. Even if she did feel wetter and more drenched than she should have upon being exposed. 

“Look. I have done nothing but the right thing since coming back. I have done [i]exactly[/i] as you asked, high priest. I have made sure that everybody’s stayed safe, and I’ve done a pretty damn good job at being part of your group, haven’t I, Vakrozad?” she asked. 

“…Ya lied, but you haven’t done bad, I’ll give ya that,” the chieftain grunted. 

“And I’ve made sure that the town treated you right. And I’ve been [i]good.[/i] You can vouch for that, too.”

The chieftain chuckled, rubbing the back of his head. He nodded as Tristan looked back, confirming that she hadn’t gotten into the hedonistic things that those touched by demons often did. She had managed to keep her self-control, despite all the things that were expected of her. 

The men looked at one another while she kept a cool face, though on the inside she was seething. This was the big reason – besides being humiliated – that she had kept the big part of her transformation and corruption from anyone else. She didn’t want them to realize what had happened to her because then they’d look down on her. They’d see her as something weak, something that couldn’t be trusted. 

She had been corrupted, warped, changed, and she had still done better than either of them. She refused to just take them being angry at her, not for something that wasn’t even true. 

“So if you want the full truth, here it is. I was [i]raped[/i] by the hellhound in the Arcanamirium. I was raped, rutted, and transformed. COMPLETELY. I became a hellhound, and then I came [i]back.[/i] I kicked Melchiresa’s ass so hard that she went running back to Hell after I blew up her altar. 

“And then, when it was done, I had a partial transformation back. They managed to strip almost everything else out, except for that,” she said, pointing to her crotch. “And despite that, despite still having a demon mark, I’m [i]still[/i] myself. I’m doing the right thing, doing [i]good[/i] things, and you can all fuck off if you think that I’m a risk. I am [i]not[/i] one of those demon-touched whores that can’t stop themselves.”

By the end of it, she was shouting, and there was nothing that she could do to stop herself. Not that she wanted to. The way that both men had been looking down at her, angry and disdainful, was beyond anything that she was prepared to take. She felt – 

She felt like a dog that was defending its den, she supposed. And that wasn’t necessarily reassuring. 

Eventually, both Tristan and Vakrozad looked down. They muttered something that might have been an apology, and she shook her head, refusing to just let it go at that. 

“You.” She pointed at the hobgoblin. “You can wait in the hall with the others. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“You –”

“Go. Now.”

She gritted her teeth, fighting the urge that came from way down deep to bare them and show off fangs that she didn’t have. The hobgoblin did as she told him, and they were alone again in the office. 

Tristan started to open his mouth, but she slammed her hands on the desk instead, making everything on it – even the notes he’d been taking – bounce. 

“And you. You are going to either shut up, or fix this.”

“…You mean…”

He nodded towards her crotch, and she nodded. His face burned bright red almost immediately, and she knew what he was thinking. She had to fight herself from having the same thoughts. 

It was not the right thing for any proper woman to be having, but considering that she’d just lied about keeping to the proper behavior for a woman since getting changed, she knew that she would have to keep to that. If Tristan ever found out that she’d been fucked by dogs on the way up from Absalom, he’d never believe another word that came out of her mouth. If he ever found out that she was eager to be fucked by the hobgoblins, same result. She needed to keep up the illusion of being good, pure, as she had said she was. 

And that was going to be real difficult with the waters running from her sex to the floor. She was just glad that it was getting caught by her legs rather than her dress. 

“When?” she asked. 

“I’ll have something set up tomorrow.”

“That will work. Thank you.”

“…You are surprisingly forceful,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have guessed that, after the last few days.”

“Well…everyone has a breaking point.”

“If I pushed you to yours, then I apologize.”

“…Apology accepted,” she said after a moment’s surprise. 

“That said, you will still have to be punished. We can’t avoid that.”

“I know.” She sighed. “The dress?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll explain to Vakrozad when I meet up with him again. I assume you want me to maintain my other assignment?”

“Yes. Much as I hate to risk it with demonic corruption in the work, we can’t afford to let this go. You read a book nobody else in the church could. There has to be something there; I’ll see if I can sneak that out for the next time that we meet.”

She doubted it would be that easy, but if she had the chance to read the book again, she could see where the old writing would take her. They would be able to find out what else the tome had, and what else they needed to figure out. 

And that would give them a chance to get closer to reaching the Primal Point, and maybe, just maybe, they would be able to do it without having to be hunted to get there. 

Hazel doubted it. Mol was many things, but she doubted that the seer was a liar, and from everything that she had heard and read, the hobgoblin woman was closer to the truth than whatever Aster had in mind. She needed to read more of the book to be sure, though. 

#

The dress in question was red rather than green, something meant to draw the eye and increase the shame that one felt when wearing it. It cupped the chest, cut low so that it was forced to show off flesh that most women would cover up. The skirt was more like a low loincloth rather than a proper skirt, exposing both legs and running down the front and the back, leaving part of the cheeks and the upper thighs exposed. 

To wear it was to walk through the town like some sort of streetwalker, and it was made worse with the lack of footwear. One was to be dirtied, earthen, left filthy in the eyes and minds of others until they were ready to be made clean again. That was the purpose of the dress, to fill the wearer with shame and embarrassment for what they had done. 

For Hazel, it was…less problematic than she expected, and more enjoyable than she quite imagined it would be. Particularly with Vakrozad looking at her as she emerged from the office wearing it. 

The hobgoblin’s eyes flicked up and down her body, and his mouth hung open. Sparrow and the other hobgoblin had since disappeared, so it was only the pair of them in the hallway. He shook his head, harrumphing a few times as a slow grin rose on his lips. 

“Heh…well, if that’s what you’re getting punished with –”

“Don’t. Please. Just don’t.”

“…Okay.”

They walked together through the corridors of the temple, and it took everything she had to just keep her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the way that the other brothers and sisters of the temple looked at her as they passed by. She knew that she was dressed in the most wanton way that the temple would still accept. She could feel the caressing silks of the dress rubbing her ass and along her thighs, even curling up near the spade between her legs sometimes. Her nipples verged on being exposed, and she was half-sure that the darker flesh near her nipples came close to coming free more than once. She clenched her teeth all the tighter as they walked along, thankful for the smooth floors rather than the natural wood that could have left her soles filled with splinters. 

They left the temple, and more eyes followed them. Some followed Vakrozad, of course, as they always did. He was a massive man, after all, and the sort of creature that most would have referred to as a monster. The fact that he was dressed in so little as to show off his muscles and other features probably helped with that. 

But there were more eyes on her, many more, and she shivered as she felt the way that men and women stared at her. They were not just judging her, not just seeing her as the guilty woman that she was, but imagining…things. Naughty things. Sexual things. They wanted her, and Erastil help her, she liked it. 

Dripping wet by the time that they crossed the dirt fields to the forest where the hobgoblins stayed, she expected them to keep walking. She had things to share with Mol, after all, and there were probably responsibilities that Vakrozad had that needed to be fulfilled, too. 

Instead, they stopped, and he leaned against a tree, looking down at her. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“What?”

“I’m sorry for pushing you. You said no, and…well, guess I took it a bit more from your body than from your mouth. You smelled like you wanted it, and I just listened to that, instead.”

“…Thank you,” she muttered, rubbing her arm. 

“But I have to know.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you want it? Really?”

Hazel shook her head, slowly leaning back against a tree of her own. She knew that this was going to come up eventually, and she knew that she’d have to deal with it in her own way, somehow. She just didn’t expect it to come about like this. 

[i]Vitus…[/i]

She still remembered the sorcerer, and remembered how close they’d gotten during the events at the Arcanamirium. She remembered how hard he had struggled not to take advantage of her, despite the fact that he had been more demon-marked, more corrupted than she was right then and there. He had been suffering from all sorts of urges, and he had still tried his best to hold out and keep from being a threat to her. It had taken a full transformation to make him overstep that line, and as soon as it was done, he was grief-stricken. 

Hazel didn’t know if they were still close. Hell, she didn’t know what his feelings were after this long. But she knew that they had agreed to wait, to see what would happen, and she hoped that it would be enough to keep him waiting if she did the same. 

“I have someone else,” she said. 

“Who?”

“A sorcerer. Back in Absalom.”

“…Do you think he’s waiting for you?”

“That’s my hope,” she said, rubbing her arm. “He’s the…he’s the one that raped me.”

“…And you want him back?”

“I want him.” 

She didn’t know how to put it other than that. They had been close, he had been kind, and they…enjoyed each other. Never quite as humans, not enough for that to be clear whether it would work or not, but enough to want to try more. She needed to clear herself of this, though, so she could be sure that it would work. Looking at the ground again, she sighed. 

“It’s hard to explain. We went through hell together and came out the other side. There’s…something there, and he didn’t do the rape willingly. He was forced into that. This isn’t some…corruption speaking. This is me.”

“And if he wasn’t there?”

Oh, no. It was that tone. It was that sort of thing. Hazel slowly lifted her head, looking the hobgoblin chief right in the eye. 

He was a good person. Not a great person, perhaps, but good. There had been every opportunity to punish her or push it further than he had in the Vault. It would have been easy for him to run off, to leave her behind to be caught by someone besides Tristan. He could have done what Sparrow and the other hobgoblin had done, and she would have been hard-pressed to stop him once they got started. 

He hadn’t. He was good. 

She sighed. 

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Heh…I’ll take that.”

He offered her his arm, and she took it, allowing herself to be led through the forest. Her red dress fluttered, almost exposing her ass as they walked, and she shivered as she remembered more of Mol’s vision and what might happen to her in the future. 

[i]No. Never.[/i]

Hazel wished there was more oomph in the denial. 












[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Hazel and Vakrozad are interrogated by Tristan, and some of the things that have gone unsaid by Hazel end up being exposed. 

Tags: F/solo, embarrassment, half-elf, human, hobgoblin, fantasy, series, magic, exhibitionism, forced exhibitionism, barefoot, exposure, canine anatomy, emotional, anger, no sex,